Gratitude can rock your world. It’s the cousin of joy. No, on second thought, it’s the Siamese twin. You simply can’t have one without the other.

Yesterday a sales lady caught me cradling some high-end shampoo as I walked to the checkout counter. I was celebrating having landed another, albeit short-term, client by purchasing some sparkle in a bottle. It’s not the kind I use every day. It’s expensive, smells good, and gives me an inner shine.

“What reverence!” she exclaimed as she watched me carefully place the bottle on the counter.

If she only knew.

I wasn’t always this grateful about things. In fact, I took a lot of things for granted ~ big house, nice cashflow, effortless opportunities to travel whenever I needed to scratch my travel itch.

Things have changed now. Effortlessness now comes in the form of my own gratefulness for the things I still have. And although my material world has shrunk, my spiritual one has expanded immeasurably.

Everything else was merely a trapping of an empty, less than ideal existence. Doing what you want doesn’t always give you what you want. Oftentimes that kind of freedom sends you on a downward spiral into misery.

Money can’t buy you happiness. In fact, happiness is not for sale. Unlike the shampoo, an expression of my joy for having acquired another client, happiness is a state of mind.

As I left the store with my new purchase (and I swear I think the sales lady was glowing, too), I reflected on the shattering power of gratitude. It can break down walls of resistence within ourselves. It can carefully craft a whole new way of being in the world. When we look at what we have versus what we do not, our entire perspective changes.

I know people who drive fancy cars and live in palatial homes, but their happiness level isn’t any higher. They seek satisfaction only to watch it crumble after a few moments of fun. When we are accustomed to so much, it is hard to see it all. It grows into a blur and an unsettling feeling of dis-ease enters our bones.

Yes, gratitude can indeed rock your world. It has certainly rocked mine. Foundation and all.